This is an ongoing series of constructed photographs rooted in the forest. These works, carried out in Surrey, Hampshire and Wales, involve site specific interventions in the landscape, ‘wrapping’ trees with white material to construct a visual relationship between tree, not-tree and the line of horizon according to the camera’s viewpoint.

Gee, I was enjoying the images until you described it for me that crudely and explicitly.

I’m making a complaint here that Tom Wolfe made long ago in his little book The Painted Word, but I think it’s still valid. The Painted Word is not an especially good book overall — it’s reductive and simplistic about many things — but at the heart of the book there’s a powerful and important statement about the ways in which the visual arts have become subservient to language, especially the written word, so that not just critics but the artists themselves seem to feel that some kind of analytical/critical/theoretical description is a necessary accompaniment to the artwork.

But any painting or sculpture or, to use a very recent term for a very recent thing, “installation” that’s worth its salt ought to be able to stand alone, without words. I actually really like the photo above a good deal: I think it’s visually interesting, if not profound. I appreciate what you’ve made there, Zander Olsen; please don’t mess it up by explaining it to me.

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6 Responses to The Tyranny of the Word

The same is true of the post-Vatican II Catholic liturgy, at least in the way it is celebrated in too many parishes: the ritual can’t just be performed, but someone has to explain to the congregation what is going on. Which defeats the whole point of a ritual: it shouldn’t need constant explanation, especially for people who witness it every week.

This reminded me of an interesting chapter in WJT Mitchell’s Picture Theory, “Ut Pictura Theoria: Abstract Paining and Language,” in which Mitchell, with a nod to Wolfe, traces the history of this very development. Mitchell concludes “‘theory’ is the ‘word’ that stands in the same relation to abstract art that traditional literary forms had to representational painting.” Abstraction’s penchant for the “will to silence” actually betrays a social mandate: “you, who are not qualified to speak about this painting, keep your mouths shut.”

Also, in this and in Mr. White’s case above, it seems there is perhaps too much “looking at” and an unwillingness/inability to “look through,” to borrow CS Lewis’ illustration.

My father, the doctor who prescribes Coca Cola, is also a painter, and sometimes a writer. Last week he sent me this:

“The fact of the matter is that almost without exception the “concept(s)” are banal and without artistic or intellectual merit and the products then the same. It is one thing to “own” a Le Witt (or Warhol or a Lichtenstein or whoever.) It’s quite another to have to look at it every day. A Le Witt geometric? Is that it? A comic book or soup can? I get it, I get it. A ceramic hamburger? I’ve already looked at that joke. The only thing I can admire about Le Wittless is that he has the balls to think his stuff is any good or significant and sold it. And yes, I’ve thrown Pop in with Conceptual.”

Looks like pretty much every tree in the Mediterranean. Seriously though, E.H. Gombrich expressed the ideal: “Images and words are blood relations.” How wonderful when tyranny gives way to service – words serving, illuminating, even loving images.

Matt, let me put it this way: I am deeply grateful for the scholars and critics who have helped me to understand Caravaggio’s paintings. I am equally grateful that we have no explanations of those paintings from Caravaggio.